What happened

Shares of Chinese trucking company MingZhu Logistics Holdings (YGMZ 20.21%) are down nearly 40% on Friday morning, despite there being no apparent news. Then again, the company's shares gained nearly 300% in the days prior without any news on those days either, so it appears Friday's move is just a snapback for a highly volatile security.

So what

MingZhu Logistics operates and manages a fleet of owned and contracted trucks and trailers out of regional terminals in China's Guangdong Province and Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The company went public in late October, raising $12 million by offering 3 million shares at $4 apiece, and the stock moved very little until this week.

YGMZ Chart

YGMZ data by YCharts

It's hard to say what has caused the sudden interest, but it should be noted it doesn't take much to move a stock like this. MingZhu according to Yahoo! Finance stats has just 12 million shares outstanding, and only 2.38 million of them are available for trading.

On average only about 600,000 shares of MingZhu have traded per day since the company's public debut. That volume spiked to 23 million shares on Thursday, and as of 11 EST Friday more than 2.3 million shares have traded hands. With such a small number of shares available the stock is prone to oversized moves on days when there is high demand to either buy or sell.

A truck driving on the highway.

Image source: Getty Images.

Now what

MingZhu appears to have a decent, if unspectacular, business, providing transportation and logistics services in China. The company according to its registration statement generated $29.4 million in revenue in 2019, up from $27.6 million in 2018, and has been seeking to expand into air freight. It intends to use the proceeds from the IPO in part to acquire new revenue-generating equipment in response to expanding demand for its services.

But this stock, at least for now, is being controlled by momentum investors and not fundamentals. That's speculating, not investing. Even if you like this business, I'd advise staying away from the shares until the momentum crowd moves on and the stock goes back to trading on fundamentals.